Knock, Celeste. They won’t be here. Not at this time.
As soon as her hand touched the wood of the door, Fox was assaulted by the past. It gulped up whatever strength and confidence she’d been given by the fur and the many years away from this place. Jacob! Fox pictured his face so it would remind her of the present and of the Fox she’d become.
“Who’s there?” Her mother’s voice. What a mighty animal the past is. The hushed songs her mother used to sing to her at bedtime… her mother’s fingers in her hair as she braided it… Who is there? Yes, who?
“It’s me, Celeste.”
The name tasted of the honey Fox used to steal from the wild bees when she was a child, and of the nettles that used to sting her bare legs.
Silence. Was her mother standing behind the door, once more hearing the impact of the stones on the ground and on her child’s skin? It felt like an eternity before she pushed back the latch.
She’d grown old. The long black hair was now gray, and her beauty had all but faded, washed, little by little, from her face by each passing year.
“Celeste…” She spoke the name as though it’d been waiting on her lips all these years, like a butterfly she’d never shooed away. She took her daughter’s hands before Fox could pull them away. Stroked Fox’s hair and kissed her face. Again and again. She held Fox tight, as though she wanted to get back all the years when she hadn’t held her child. Then she pulled the girl into the house. She latched the door. They both knew why.
The house still smelled of fish and damp winters. The same table. The same chairs. The same bench by the oven. And behind the windows, nothing but meadows and piebald cows. As though time had stopped. But on her way here, Fox had passed many abandoned houses. It was a hard life, having to rely on sea and land to feed you. The machines’ noisy promises were so alluring: Everything could be made by human hands, and wind and winter no longer had to be feared. Yet it was the wind and the winter that had shaped these people.
Fox reached for the bowl of soup her mother had pushed toward her.
“You’re doing well.” It wasn’t a question. There was relief in her voice. Relief. Guilt. And so much helpless love. But that wasn’t enough.
“I need the ring.”
Her mother put down the milk jug from which she was filling her cup.
“You still have it?”
Her mother didn’t answer.
“Please. I need it!”
“He wouldn’t have wanted me to give it to you.” She pushed the milk toward her daughter. “You can’t know how many years you still have.”
“I’m young.”
“So was he.”
“But you’re alive, and that’s all he ever wanted.”
Her mother sat down on one of the chairs on which she’d spent so many hours of her life, mending clothes, rocking babies…
“So you’re in love with someone. What is his name?”
But Fox didn’t want to say Jacob’s name. Not in this house. “I owe him my life. That’s all.” It wasn’t all, but her mother would understand.
She brushed the gray hair from her face. “Ask me for anything else.”
“No. And you know you owe me this.” The words were out before Fox could hold them back.
The pain on the tired face made Fox forget all the anger she felt. Her mother got up.
*
“I never should have told you that story.” She smoothed the tablecloth. “I just wanted you to know what kind of a man your father was.”
She brushed her hand across the tablecloth again, as though she could brush away everything that had made her life so hard. Then she slowly walked to the chest where she kept the few things she called her own. From it she took a wooden box that was covered in black lace. It was lace from the dress she’d worn in mourning for two years.
“Maybe I’d have survived the fever even if he hadn’t put it on my finger,” she said as she opened the box.
Inside it was a ring of glass.
“What I need it for is worse than fever,” Fox said. “But I promise you, I’ll use it only if there is no other way.”
Her mother shook her head and firmly closed her fingers around the box. But then she heard some noises outside.
Steps and voices. Sometimes, when the sea was too rough, the men returned early from their boats.
Her mother looked toward the door. Fox took the box from her hand. She felt ashamed of the fear she saw on her mother’s face. Yet it wasn’t just fear; there was also love. There was always love, even for the man who struck her children.
He knocked on the door, and Fox pushed back the latch. She longed for the vixen’s teeth, but she wanted to look her stepfather in the eyes. She’d barely reached up to his elbow when he drove her out of the house.
He wasn’t as big as she’d remembered him. Because you were smaller then, Celeste. So small. He’d been the Giant and she the Dwarf. The Giant who smashed everything in his path. But now she was as tall as he, and he’d grown old. His face was red, as always—red from the wine, the sun, and the rage. Rage against anything that moved.
It took him a moment before he realized who was standing front of him.
He flinched, as if from a snake, and his hand closed around the stick he was leaning on. He’d always had sticks or belts. He used to throw boots and wooden logs at his sons and Fox, as though they were rats hiding behind his oven.
“What are you doing here?” he barked. “Get out!”
He wanted to grab her as he used to, but Fox shoved him back and slapped the stick out of his hand.
“Let her go.” Her mother’s voice was trembling, but at least this time she said something.
“Get out of my way,” Fox said to the man she once had to call Father, even though he’d taught her to despise the word itself.
He lifted his fists. How often had her eyes been glued to those hands, full of fear of the tanned skin on the knuckles tightening, turning white. She saw him in her dreams sometimes, and he always had the mouth of a wolf.
She pushed past him without saying another word. She wanted to forget he existed, to imagine that he’d just disappeared one day, like Jacob’s father, or that her mother had never married again.
“I will be back,” Fox said to her.
Her mother stood by the window as Fox walked toward the gate. Just like the last time. And just like then, the three of them blocked her path, her stepfather and his two sons. He’d gotten his stick back, and his eldest was holding the pitchfork. Gustave and René. Gustave looked even more dense that he used to. René was smarter, but he did whatever Gustave told him. It was René who’d thrown the first stone.
Shape-shifter. Nobody had understood better what Jacob’s brother had felt as he grew a skin of jade. Yet unlike Will, Fox had always been able to choose to wear the fur.
“Go on! Find a stone!” she hissed at René. “Or are you waiting for your brother’s orders?”
He ducked his head and looked uneasily at the pistol on her belt.
“Get the hell out of here!” Her stepfather squinted his myopic eyes.
She was no longer afraid of him. It was an exhilarating feeling. “Where is Thierry?” she asked. There was one more brother.
Gustave just gave her a hostile stare. His shirt was speckled with fish blood.
“He went to the city,” said René.
“Shut your mouth!” his father yelled.
Being his stepdaughter hadn’t been easy, but his youngest had it just as bad. Thierry had envied Fox her fur, and she was glad that he’d managed to get away.
“You know what they say about shape-shifters.” She held up her hand. “Everybody we touch will grow a fur as well. Who wants to go first?”
She shoved her hand into her stepfather’s
chest, so hard he would be checking his skin for red hairs for days. Gustave stumbled back with a curse, and Fox was out of the gate before the three could regain their courage. As she mounted her horse, she remembered how she’d stumbled across the meadows, sobbing and bleeding, pressing the fur dress to her chest. This time she took the road. She looked around once more at the window where her mother had been standing, but all she saw was the reflection of the sky on the glass, and the primroses growing next to the door.
*
She made one more stop before continuing on to Gargantua. The house was dilapidated, and the grave by the crumbled garden wall was overgrown, its headstone poking out from a thick nest of grass and roots. A hazel bush had sprung up in front of it. The branches were covered in catkins, and beneath them lay a few nuts from the previous autumn. The moss grew thick on her father’s engraved name, etching it in green letters onto the gray stone: Joseph Marie Auger.
Fox had come here often as a child. She’d pluck the grass from the damp soil, place wildflowers on the stone, and search the abandoned house for signs of the life she and her mother might have had there. This was where she’d met the vixen for the first time, and it was in the woods bordering the crumbled wall that she had saved the wounded fox and her pups from Gustave’s and Rene’s clubs.
“I know, I haven’t been back in a while,” she said. “I asked Maman for the ring. I’m not sure she used your gift wisely. Sometimes I wish you’d let her die and kept the years you gave her for yourself. You can only say this to a grave, but it feels good to say it. Maybe you could have protected me. I’ve found someone who did that for these past years. There’s nobody I love more. He’s looked out for me so often, but now it’s my turn to protect him.”
Fox gathered the nuts from the grave and put them in her pocket. Then she swung herself onto her horse. The sun was already quite low, and Jacob didn’t have time to wait for her.
28
THORNS AND TEETH
The wolf’s breath stank of the rotting flesh that was lodged between its teeth. The eyes were nearly as golden as the Goyl’s. Jacob had heard of the wolves in these parts. Supposedly, they took their victims even from their beds and parlors. Not important—Jacob knew this was going to be messy. Maybe drowning wouldn’t have been such a bad death after all.
There were now five wolves circling him. He tried to free one hand to get to his knife, but the choke vine dug its thorns into his flesh so relentlessly that the pain drew out a suppressed cry.
Scream, Jacob. Why not? Maybe Fox will hear you. No. She was probably already in Gargantua, waiting. What would she do if he didn’t turn up? Search for him, as the Goyl had said? But surely not for the rest of her life. The vixen would find out quickly enough what had happened to him. The thought was consoling in a way.
One of the wolves dragged its tongue over Jacob’s face, getting a taste. Jacob tried to free at least one leg so he could kick at it, but the thorns clawed even deeper into his flesh. Damn, Jacob, think of something.
They stopped.
The larger one licked its mouth.
The end of the prelude.
Jacob threw himself to one side. He heard teeth snap at empty air. The next one bit into the vines, but they weren’t going to protect him for long. Jacob desperately tried to remember what he knew about choke vines. He’d used them himself to slow down pursuers, though never to capture them. One of the wolves bit into the vines around his chest; another was pulling at the ones around his legs.
Choke vines, Jacob. How could you forget! What do they like most?
He threw himself around again, no matter how much it hurt, and he rolled around on the forest floor. The wolves let go with angry barks while the thorns tore through his skin.
Blood—the taste choke vines relished above all else. Of course, it also made the wolves even more frenzied. The next bite was so determined that the teeth actually found his flesh. Jacob howled as the teeth dug into his side. But the vines had also tasted the blood, and they began to grow even faster.
Fresh vines shot out toward the wolves, hardening as they grew. They clawed at their fur and enveloped Jacob in an ever-thicker cocoon. He found it hard to breathe, and his clothes were sticky with his own blood, but at least the wolves couldn’t reach him anymore. They howled with rage and dug their teeth again and again into the thorny branches, even though the vines were now also growing around them. Jacob fought for air. His fingers found the hilt of his knife, but he couldn’t move his hands enough to get hold of it.
The lead wolf paused. It panted with lust for the flesh that smelled so deliciously of blood and the cold sweat of fear.
Then it snapped at the vines that had grown around Jacob’s throat. Jacob tried to turn away, but the vines that protected him also held him like fly in a spider’s web. After one more bite, the wolf’s breath brushed over naked skin. Jacob could already feel the teeth on his throat, and then…
Nothing.
No crunching cartilage. No choking on his own blood. Instead, a shrill whine. And the sharp voice of a man.
Through the vines, Jacob could see boots and the blade of a rapier. One wolf dropped with a slashed throat. Another freed itself from the vines and attacked, but the blade killed it in midair. The others drew back. Finally, one of them let out a disappointed bark and they all ran, their fur peppered with thorns.
His rescuer turned around. He was hardly older than Jacob. His rapier cut through the vines like a letter opener through paper. There weren’t many blades that could make such short work of choke vines. Jacob clambered out from the chopped-up vines while the stranger picked the thorns from his gloves. His clothes were as fine as his blade. The lapels of his jacket were lined with the fur of a black fox. In Lotharaine, only the highest nobility was allowed to hunt these animals.
The fairy-tale prince. And he even looked the part.
Great. Just be grateful he wasn’t busy saving Snow-White. The last time Jacob had felt so stupid was in the schoolyard, when a teacher had to free him from the chokehold of a girl.
“Choke vines are quite rare in these parts.” His savior helped him to his feet. “Did the wolves bite you?”
Thank him, Jacob. Go on.
“It’s not that bad.” He touched the wound in his side. “How did you drive them off so fast?” Stop it. You sound as if it were he who set the wolves on you. Pride was so tedious. But his rescuer just shrugged.
“My lands are near Champlitte. There we used to have trouble with beasts that were much bigger than these.” He offered his hand to Jacob. “Guy de Troisclerq.”
Jacob wiped the blood off his hands. “Jacob Reckless.” Treasure hunter and certifiable idiot. He could barely stand upright.
Troisclerq pointed at Jacob’s torn clothes. “You’ll have to bathe in bark suds, or else the wounds will get infected. Those thorns can be nasty.”
“I know!” Jacob! He forced his mouth into a smile. “It appears you saved my life.”
Troisclerq threw the chopped-up vines into the center of the clearing. “I was in the right place at the right time—that’s all.”
And noble as well. Stop it, Jacob! How is it his fault you stumbled into the Goyl’s trap like an amateur?
The lighter that Troisclerq held to the vines was one of the first ones Jacob had seen behind the mirror. They cost a fortune. He plucked a tendril from his hair and threw it into the flames. He was alive, but the head was gone.
The bite wound in his side hurt so badly that he had to ask Troisclerq to catch his horse for him. The sight of his plundered backpack filled him with such helpless rage that he wanted to ride after the Bastard on the spot. But his noble savior was right—he needed to have that bite looked at and to disinfect his shredded skin, or it would soon get septic. And Fox was waiting for him in Gargantua.
At least he managed to get int
o his saddle without Troisclerq having to help him with that as well. His rescuer rode a white horse that made all the mounts Jacob had ever owned look like nags in comparison.
“Where were you headed?”
“Gargantua.”
“Excellent. That’s where I’m going as well. I’m catching the evening coach to Vena.”
Oh, perfect. Exactly what he’d planned to do as well. He hoped his savior would not tell their fellow travelers how they had met. The heart in the east. He had to find it before the Bastard did, or he might as well have let the wolves have their feast.
Jacob cast a final look at the clearing where the Goyl had caught him like a rabbit. It was a long journey to Austry, and Troisclerq’s face would be there all the way, reminding him of his stupidity.
“Reckless?” Troisclerq drove his horse to Jacob’s side. “Are you that treasure hunter who used to work for the Austrian Empress?”
Jacob’s closed his tattered fingers around the reins. “The very one.”
And the idiot who let himself be robbed like a dilettante.
29
A NEW FACE
The inn where Fox was supposed to meet Jacob was one where they’d already stayed before. Back then, they’d come to Gargantua to search for a jacket made of donkey skin that hid its wearer from his enemies. Le Chat Botté was situated right next to the library, and it also stood in the shade of the monument erected by the town to commemorate the Giant for whom it was named. His effigy was as tall as a church tower, and it attracted travelers from far away, but Fox had no eyes for his silver hair, nor for the eyes made of blue glass, which supposedly moved at night. She longed for Jacob’s face. Her excursion into the past had only made it clear to her once more that he was the only home she had.
The barroom of Le Chat Botté was much more elegant than Chanute’s Ogre. Tablecloths, candles, mirrors on the walls, and waitresses with lace aprons. The landlord boasted to have personally known the legendary Puss. A pair of well-worn boots hung by the door as evidence. Those boots, however, would have barely fit a child’s feet, and every treasure hunter knew that Puss in Boots had been as tall as a grown man.
Reckless II Page 14
